IS Venables “my dad?” So asks a “young mum” from the cover of the Daily Mirror. The answer should come in two words: Jeremy Kyle. This televised patenity test would pack them in.

The story is, however, thinner than the aforesaid Kyle’s prayer book:

A young mum fears James Bulger murderer Jon Venables could be the father of her son.

Could.

She believes she may have dated one of Britain’s most notorious murderers while unaware of his true identity.

Believes. May.

She fears Venables is the ex-lover she had a brief relationship with in 2008…

Fears.

But there is one fact. Well, two. She has a child. And:

“I knew that this person I was with was a Schedule One offender – and that was all I knew.”

The anonymous woman met a man who might be Jon Venables on a dating website. She adds:

“I know I had a child with a Schedule One offender who is now untraceable. I haven’t got a clue who he is. I have not seen him for four and a half years. He was 26 at the time. It could be Venables. Perhaps I am never going to know for sure.”

And that’s front-page new in the national press because we have particular hatred for the child who killed a child, even though he was tied as an adult when aged 10. Venables was the child whose crime was described by the trial judge as a crime of “unparalleled evil”.

Pity the woman looking for love tricked into dating a man who gives her a false name.

1. You miss the bit where she says she’s only now seen pics of Venables, and has IDed him from those pics – although apparently he had a bit more weight on him when she knew him. At worst she’s dated a serious offender who looks a lot like JV.

Venables was ‘tied as an adult when aged 10’? Was that some bizzare S&M fantasy of the trial judge?
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And yes – as Mike Ross says, any relationship would necessitate a reveal of his real identity. There is no way this woman would not be told Venables’s identity. This is absolute poppycock. Someone once again seeking cash from tabloids. There is so much rubbish at the moment showing a ridiculous amount of shock that an adult Jon Venables may want a sex life. It is, frankly, childish.

Emma

Not ‘should have let her know’. Probation would have let her know. There is no way she would not have known. Which is why her story smells of cowdung.

http://www.anorak.co.uk Anorak

She might have dated him. But she offers no evidence that she did. The Mirror just takes it all on face value.

Mike Ross

mmmm jury’s out still for me. He shouldn’t have shagged her without telling her who he was. But then he shouldn’t have got in fights or taken cocaine, and he absolutely shouldn’t have collected child pornography.

If he was prepared to do THAT, I don’t think he’d hesitate at a bit of quick-shag-and-don’t-tell-her-my-real-name. We can’t dismiss it out of hand. Verdict: not proven. May be an odour of cowdung but we can’t be sure where it’s from.

Oh two more things:

1. DNA test; no argument in that case. Will very likely happen; if nothing else, some tabloid will put her up to dragging him into court alleging paternity. That would be their front pages sorted for at least a month.
2. I’ll tell you who bloody well would know who the father is; Child Support Agency. Those buggers are relentless.

Mike Ross

Oh one other obvious:

“I know I had a child with a Schedule One offender who is now untraceable.”

Then it can’t be Venables. He now has a child porn conviction; he’s a registered sex offender. He’ll be traceable for as long as that last. Plus the license terms, I’m sure, require him to report his address. Plus, as we all know, he’s still bloody well *inside*.

If he’s “untraceable”, he ain’t Venables. More holes in this story than in a Cardinal’s credibility.

Gerry

Anorak, to say was tried as an adult isn’t true, because he was released after just 8 years, because he was a child when he committed the crime, so liberals won the day there, but were proven wrong, because as we now know, they were releasing a pedophile, confirming suspicions in many minds, including James Bulger’s parents that his original crime was or became sexually motivated.

Emma

He WAS tried as an adult. He was tried in a Crown Court with full adult proceedings (wigs, gowns, obscure legal language – the works). The sentence is something different.
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Finding out your father may be a child killer would be bad enough. But your mother a cheap tabloid whore?

Virgil

“There is so much rubbish at the moment showing a ridiculous amount of shock that an adult Jon Venables may want a sex life. It is, frankly, childish.”
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Nothing, however, compares for sheer idiocy and risibility to Denise Fergus’ statement to The Sun when it emerged he had sex with a female worker at the facility he served his sentence:
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“It’s sickening. Now we know that Venables even had sex with a social worker — the carer at the home where he was kept — just months before he was paroled. That shows he was warped and perverted even then, if he was prepared to have sex like that.”
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Read that last sentence again: “He was warped and perverted even then, if he was prepared to have sex like that.”
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Somebody has become warped and perverted alright, but I’m not sure it’s Venables.
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Gerry, your train of thought doesn’t stand up to logical scrutiny. We do not know that Venables is a pedophile, and we don’t have any solid evidence that James’ murder was sexually motivated. Read what the pathologist said. It’s not categorized as a sexual crime. You are assuming the child porn must be connected to the original crime. But it doesn’t have to be and I believe it isn’t.
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The child porn offense could, and I believe does, stem from his subsequent emotional problems and dysfunctions, and does not constitute any sort of proof that James was sexually abused. There never was any substantial evidence of that.

Virgil

I find it odd that so many people think Venables’ child porn offense proves the authorities were incompetent because they failed to see they were “releasing a pedophile.”
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But Venables may well have had NO interest in child porn whatsoever at the time of his release.
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Sexual kinks and fetishes of any sort are not something people are born with, like a sexual orientation. They develop. They could first emerge at puberty or they can emerge in adulthood. There still – now as then – no substantial evidence that James’ was sexually abused or mutilated. The pathologist’s report says the same things it always said.
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Furthermore, we don’t even actually know that Venables is a pedophile. The only reports of his sex life are hook-ups with various women his own age or a bit younger or a little older. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that Venables might have looked at child porn simply and precisely for the reason he offered police: because he was “breaking the last taboo.” I don’t hear gloating or evil cackling in that statement. I hear despair, resignation, and the urge towards self-annihilation: as in, “If I can’t be the person I want to be, if I can’t find anyone to accept me as I am, all I can do is live down to everyone’s perception of me as the ultimate monster.”